A bunch of grown men looking at manga? Better be some magazine editing committee

They look the same to me

Me? I’m god of course

Like a fish finding water

Only manly evil people cross their legs

Aim & WorthKey events:

The Classroom of Truth that Ashirogi Muto is judging is a good unorthodox dark manga that goes against Shounen. Takagi says it stands out like this. Author is Nanamine Tooru, Mashiro remembers the name as he’s been sending them fan letters ever since their first publication.

The editorial department doesn’t publish him as it’s not shounen but assigns a new editor, Kosugi to him so they can work out something that would be more suited to shounen.

Kosugi meets Nanamine who’s a rather cheerful enthusiastic person and wants to meet Ashirogi Muto. He’s prepared a lighter version of Classroom of Truth for jack.

He posts his manga online and jack’s editorial department is swamped with phone calls regarding why it didn’t win. Takagi thinks that he may have planned this to boost popularity.

The chief editor asks to talk to Nanamine. He apologises for uploading it on the net and has a new piece of work. The chief editor approves it as a one shot. He also gets to meet Ashirogi.

At Ashirogi’s apartment as soon as Kosugi leaves, the truth comes out. Nanamine did plan everything, he wanted the fastest way to get published and this was the right call. He also calls the editors useless hence why he asks for opinions on the net. That’s also how he made Classroom of Truth, by taking opinions from a few people he knew on the net.

Thoughts:

We finally meet Nanamine the only real antagonist we’ve seen on Bakuman I think. It’s all been about rivalry and self improvement up until now, but we finally have someone bad to ‘fight’ against, like all shounen should. A clever, calculating, devious villain, reminds me of death note, I wonder why.

Shame Nanamine is dark and didn’t take after Takagi’s lighter side. Nanamine’s got talent, no doubt about that, could’ve been a good rival for Takagi. Though that said, whoever loves Takagi’s non mainstream stories that much has gotta have a bit of dark in them. I think he could improve his acting though, might be me but that overly cheerful demeanour he put across was way over exaggerated. It looked forced though I suppose when you’re not expecting someone like that to be so sinister you really can’t see it coming.

An 18 year old aiming to disrupt the entire Jack editorial department, yeah, guess you wouldn’t see it coming. He’s got some interesting ideas too. I liked how he takes ideas from people online to use in his manga but that runs the normal internet risks of meeting weirdos, them dropping out, giving you horrible ideas or being of no use at all. There’s also that being ideas from various sources, it could result in a mess of ideas that doesn’t go anywhere if he’s integrating them all into a story. But with only a few people at the moment it’s probably no problem. However I don’t agree, probably same with everyone else, that editors are useless. Yes online people can probably give more interesting ideas than editors, as editors don’t usually give ideas, but he’s forgetting that they’re there to advise. You come up with the ideas, the editor, the one who knows the industry, will know whether it can be a hit or not. They have their own ways of helping that you can’t get online, they have experience and they can view things from many perspectives, after all, that’s where their living comes from.

Gotta say though, classroom of truth was very good. I wanted them to read on. I’d love it if they made it into a proper manga in real life. Don’t even have to make it long, one volume just on those three games would do, very entertaining and drags you in. That said, how would you continue it if it was continuing as a series? The main character surviving and inadvertently entering a lot of other mind games? That’d certainly be good if they’re all well planned out like Classroom of Truth.

So… what has Takagi created? A darker version of himself by the looks of it. Looking forward to what he’s planning next, he’s got his manga in Jack now, how else can he stir up trouble? Or how is he planning to get this one shot as a series?